For many of us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a prison. Though we were cut off from the world and all the trouble we enjoyed stirring up out there, we were also cut off from the demands and expectations that had driven us crazy. What could be expected of us now that we were stowed away in a loony bin?

My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

Being crasy doesn't mean to be broken...It is you and me amplified", Girl, Interrupted

All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.

But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.

It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.